North Carolina Central University News Commission Formed to Enhance Intellectual Climate at NCCU February 16, 2011 A new commission has been formed at North Carolina Central University with the goal of raising academic expectations and accountability for students, faculty, staff and administrators. The Commission on Enhancing the Intellectual Climate, established by Chancellor Charlie Nelms, is designed to explore innovative ways to facilitate student-faculty exchanges, expand students’ involvement in intellectual activities both on and off the campus, and to begin a conversation with the university community about perceptions of the intellectual climate. The commission includes faculty, staff and students who have been charged with providing recommendations to the yet-to-be-named Activity Coordinator. Programs and activities focused on improving the climate are scheduled to being this semester. The first speaker is Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, assistant professor of history at Indiana University and newly appointed director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Located in Harlem, the Schomburg Center is the world’s leading repository on the global black experience. Muhammad will speak on the physical and intellectual perspectives of documentation and preservation of African-American culture at an invitation-only event on the NCCU campus Feb. 23 and 24. A native of Chicago, Muhammad is the great-grandson of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam and his father is Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photographer Ozier Muhammad. Khalil has completed a major interpretive book on African-American studies, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, published by Harvard University Press, and is currently at work on a new book, Negro Stranger in Our Midst: The Origins of African-American Criminality in the Urban North, 1900-1940. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in economics, he earned his doctorate in American history from Rutgers University. Muhammad spent two years as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit criminal justice reform agency in New York City, before joining the faculty of Indiana University. The commission is chaired by Wendy Rountree, associate professor in the English and Mass Communication Department. Other members include Antonio Baines, assistant professor, Biomedical/ Biotechnology Research Institute (BBRI); Ansel Brown, assistant professor of political science; Frances Graham, associate vice chancellor of student affairs; Lenneal Henderson, endowed chair, political science; Undi Hoffler, director of research compliance; Gail Hollowell, assistant professor, biology; Jonathan Livingston, assistant professor and director of EXPORT Outreach at BBRI; Freddie Parker, interim chair, History Department; Wendy Scott, professor, School of Law; Theodosia Shields, director of library services and Debbie Thomas, associate provost and associate vice chancellor of academic affairs. Student representatives are Judith Louis, Shatavia Kelley, Breylon Smith, Len Sturdivant and Dominique Thompson. Pauletta Brown Bracy, assistant professor and director of academic affairs and Brenda R. Shaw, director, Title III, serve as ex-officio members of the Commission. Media representatives can gain access to the Muhammad event by contacting the Office of Public Relations at (919) 530-6295. SANDRA M. PHOENIX Program Director HBCU Library Alliance sphoenix@hbculibraries.org<mailto:sphoenix@hbculibraries.org> www.hbculibraries.org<http://www.hbculibraries.org/> 404.592.4820 Skype:sandra.phoenix1 1438 West Peachtree Street NW Suite 200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Toll Free: 1.800.999.8558 (Lyrasis) Fax: 404.892.7879 www.lyrasis.org<http://www.lyrasis.org/> Honor the ancestors, honor the children.